How to get ready for and pass CIS CSM exam? Good practice for CSM certification prep

[Michal Sadowski]

Kaboom!

Good news – I’m officially a Certified Implementation Specialist – Customer Service Management. I’ve just passed CSM CIS certification exam for Orlando release.

This is to throw some light on how it works and how to prep for it. Enjoy!

My background going into the exam

On the exam day I was going on 2 years of experience with ServiceNow. I had Certified System Administrator, Certified Implementation Specialist for PPM and a fair number of micro-certifications under my belt.

I had taken both required training courses with ServiceNow:

• Customer Service Management Fundamentals (2 days, based on the participant guide)
• Customer Service Management Implementation (2 days, based on the participant guide)

Unfortunately, you can’t skip these paid courses and go straight to the exam (information valid at the time of publication).

I’d also gone through all recommended ServiceNow Learning courses, as per CIS-CSM: Certification Test Prep (Orlando):

• Communities Implementation
• CSM with Service Management for Implementers
• CSM with Service Management for BPCs
• Agent Workspace Fundamentals
• Advanced Work Assignment
• Proactive Customer Service Operations

My micro-certifications included the ones closely related to CSM:

• Predictive Intelligence
• PA Essentials
• Virtual Agent

To top it off, I had a healthy amount of practical experience with CSM from one client engagement where I worked as a technical consultant. It was a complex CSM Pro implementation, in the Managed Services Provider environment, with domain separation, Performance Analytics, integration and migration from IT Service Management, and no shortage of custom requirements. During this project, a huge source of learning for me was creating the user documentation and delivering the user and administrator training for the client before Go-live.

Exam basics

The exam takes 130 minutes.

There are 60 questions.

You can take and an online proctored or on-site exam. Mine was remote, online-proctored.

The passing percentage is 60% (but it’s unconfirmed).

Key resources to better understand and prepare for the exam:

• CIS CSM Exam Blueprint (Orlando)
• NowLearning CIS-CSM: Certification Test Prep (Orlando)

Both offer a wealth of practical information, e.g. sample questions and breakdown of questions by application area. There is no better way to structure exam prep than around these documents.

Key resources

Three main things worked for me:

1. Practical experience with the product during the client engagement, plus considerable amount of tinkering with CSM in my PDIs
2. Training courses and, more importantly, participant guides for CSM Fundamentals and CSM Implementation
3. NowLearning Courses related to and recommended for CSM CIS certification exam

I also:

• explored CSM docs, whenever it was necessary (Orlando)
• went over several Community articles, esp. the ones related to roles (link, link, link)
• explored Knowledge 18, Knowledge 19 & Knowledge 20 sessions related to CSM
• studied with online flashcards
• took tonnes of notes that I reviewed right before the exam

What surprised me

A few things.

There’s a lot of time – 130 mins. That's way more than you really need if you’re well-prepared.

I was done after less than 1h and – to be honest – I took my time reviewing selected answers as many as three times! And I still finished early.

The other thing that surprised me was the breadth of the questions. I didn’t expect so many questions about Field Service Management, especially now that it’s not even part of CSM SKU. I also felt a little underprepared for Consumer Service questions – they are not given as much attention in the training materials as in the exam.

What I also noticed  was that a considerable segment of questions was very easy (say 40%). Another segment was more difficult (30%). The remaining 30% were really challenging questions.

But altogether – I didn’t get the impression the exam was particularly hard to pass.

What to focus on

You’ll have a reasonable probability of passing CIS CSM if you have a good grasp of the following areas:

• Customer Service Management Concepts, Terminology & Challenges
• Benefits & mechanics of different features of ServiceNow CSM, e.g. Service Portal, Service Catalog, Proactive Customer Service Operations, Escalations, Special Handling Notes, etc.
• Case Management, including Major Issue Management
• Asset & Product Management in CSM
• Roles, roles, roles – lots of questions about roles!
• Properties & default settings, e.g. Auto close resolved cases, Follow-the-sun flag, etc.
• Portals, Knowledge Management & Community
• Case types
• Native integration with IT Service Management

Good luck!

Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions.

Please consider marking as helpful, if this helped you in any way.

Pro tip

You can achieve CSM Professional Suite Certification if you combine CSM CIS with the following micro-certifications:

• Predictive Intelligence
• Performance Analytics Essentials
• Virtual Agent

[Joel L]

Hello,

the  CIS-CSM: Certification Test Prep (Orlando) seems to be not valid anymore.

Might be replaced by Certification Exam Preparation: Certified Implementation Specialist - Customer Service Management.

[Famela Medina]

Hello!

With all the upgrades, does anyone know if these exams differ to when these previous comments were posted?

Hoping to sit the exam soon!

Many thanks for your help...

[stewarth9818]

Just passed the CIS-CSM exam in 2024! SkillCertPro's practice exams were amazing - 80% similar to the actual test. They update the tests biweekly and hence I got access to latest exam questions. Their comprehensive course covered everything from project planning to knowledge management, making me exam-ready. Highly recommend them for anyone aiming to get CIS-CSM certified! they also offer instructor notes which can be used as last minute reference. 

[midarexm]

Passexamhub was incredibly helpful for my CIS-CSM exam preparation. Their study materials were thorough, accurate, and covered all the key areas. I passed on my first attempt! Highly recommend it for anyone preparing for ServiceNow exams.